Mexico: Regarding the 20th Anniversary of the APPO
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by Mural Newspaper on the 14th of June.
June 14th marks the 20th anniversary of the repression against democratic teachers in Oaxaca, orchestrated by then-Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. That morning, a brutal operation mobilized various police forces to evict the teachers’ encampment in the city’s main square. With tear gas, patrol cars, firearms, and even a helicopter, the tyrant attempted to fulfill his darkest desires, but what he achieved was the awakening of an entire people.
Instinctively, from every corner of the city, ordinary people poured into the streets in solidarity with the teachers who, for a month prior, had been vilified and criminalized by the pro-government press, whose sole purpose was to justify the repression. Armed only with sticks, stones, and dignity, the people of Oaxaca helped their teachers retake the main square, and from that moment on, history would be different. The Democratic Movement of Education Workers of Oaxaca (MDTEO) convened the various organized forces of the people’s movement, which had also been persecuted or attacked by the dictator, at the Central Law School Building (UABJO). There, the idea arose of forming a broad movement of unity and struggle capable of drawing in the unorganized masses. The APPO was born.
The historical accumulation of abuses, dispossession, misery, oppression, exploitation, and humiliations, coupled with the most violent political bossism and the savage repression against teachers, was the objective factor that allowed the spontaneous uprising of the masses in the different regions of the state, embracing the slogan “Ulysses will fall!”
The people, pouring into the streets, displayed creativity, initiative, and militancy, allowing the People’s Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) to leap into a genuine people’s insurrection that transcended the boundaries of bourgeois legality and its “good manners,” as well as the union leadership and the sacred cows of the movement, who would later apply their opportunistic “negotiation at all costs” approach. For almost six months, the APPO effectively assumed a new power in the city and in several People’s Councils. Through self-defense and an armed sea of masses, it defended the interests of the poor, preventing the functioning of official powers in the state. Military intervention was the only alternative the old Mexican state had, imposing a siege on Oaxaca to prevent the example from spreading throughout the country, where new People’s Assemblies were already emerging.
On the 20th anniversary of the APPO, there are many lessons to be learned from that historical process that marked the class struggle in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico. The collective and honest efforts of those who gave life to that great social movement and remained on the left are needed to systematize all that experience, which was undoubtedly a great school of action that forged cadres, activists, combatants, and people’s masses for the next great revolutionary wave to come.
However, from these pages we can summarize the main lessons as follows: 1) The unity of the people’s forces must be based on principles and action. 2) Insurrection should not be played at. 3) Insurrection should not be allowed to be negotiated. 4) Power must be contested piece by piece, and a New Power must be established. 5) The New Power must be defended with revolutionary armed struggle. 6) With the perspective of power for the people, the working class must reconstitute its Vanguard Party as a Heroic Combatant of the Revolution.
